E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (4 page)

"Not Crawshay again?" I cried, standing still in my hat.

Raffles regarded me with that tantalizing smile of his which might
mean nothing, yet which often meant so much; and in a flash I was
convinced that our most jealous enemy and dangerous rival, the
doyen of an older school, had paid him yet another visit.

"That remains to be seen," was the measured reply; "and I for one
have not set naked eye on the fellow since I saw him off through
that window and left myself for dead on this very spot. In fact,
I imagined him comfortably back in jail."

"Not old Crawshay!" said I. "He's far too good a man to be taken
twice. I should call him the very prince of professional cracksmen."

"Should you?" said Raffles coldly, with as cold an eye looking into
mine. "Then you had better prepare to repel princes when I'm gone."

"But gone where?" I asked, finding a corner for my hat and coat,
and helping myself to the comforts of the venerable dresser which
was one of our friend's greatest treasures. "Where is it you are off
to, and why are you taking this herd of white elephants with you?"

Raffles bestowed the cachet of his smile on my description of his
motley plate. He joined me in one of his favorite cigarettes, only
shaking a superior head at his own decanter.

"One question at a time, Bunny," said he. "In the first place, I
am going to have these rooms freshened up with a potful of paint,
the electric light, and the telephone you've been at me about so
long."

"Good!" I cried. "Then we shall be able to talk to each other day
and night!"

"And get overheard and run in for our pains? I shall wait till you
are run in, I think," said Raffles cruelly. "But the rest's a
necessity: not that I love new paint or am pining for electric light,
but for reasons which I will just breathe in your private ear, Bunny.
You must not try to take them too seriously; but the fact is, there
is just the least bit of a twitter against me in this rookery of an
Albany. It must have been started by that tame old bird, Policeman
Mackenzie; it isn't very bad as yet, but it needn't be that to reach
my ears. Well, it was open to me either to clear out altogether,
and so confirm whatever happened to be in the air, or to go off for
a time, under some arrangement which would give the authorities
ample excuse for overhauling every inch of my rooms. Which would
you have done, Bunny?"

"Cleared out, while I could!" said I devoutly.

"So I should have thought," rejoined Raffles. "Yet you see the merit
of my plan. I shall leave every mortal thing unlocked."

"Except that," said I, kicking the huge oak case with the iron
bands and clamps, and the baize lining fast disappearing under
heavy packages bearing the shapes of urns and candelabra.

"That," replied Raffles, "is neither to go with me nor to remain
here."

"Then what do you propose to do with it?"

"You have your banking account, and your banker," he went on. This
was perfectly true, though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one
open, and enabled me to propitiate the other in moments of emergency.

"Well?"

"Well, pay in this bundle of notes this afternoon, and say you have
had a great week at Liverpool and Lincoln; then ask them if they
can do with your silver while you run over to Paris for a merry
Easter. I should tell them it's rather heavy - a lot of old family
stuff that you've a good mind to leave with them till you marry and
settle down."

I winced at this, but consented to the rest after a moment's
consideration. After all, and for more reasons that I need enumerate,
it was a plausible tale enough. And Raffles had no banker; it was
quite impossible for him to explain, across any single counter, the
large sums of hard cash which did sometimes fall into his hands; and
it might well be that he had nursed my small account in view of the
very quandary which had now arisen. On all grounds, it was impossible
for me to refuse him, and I am still glad to remember that my assent
was given, on the whole, ungrudgingly.

"But when will the chest be ready for me I merely asked, as I stuffed
the notes into my cigarette case. "And how are we to get it out of
this, in banking hours, without attracting any amount of attention at
this end?"

Raffles gave me an approving nod.

"I'm glad to see you spot the crux so quickly, Bunny. I have
thought of your taking it round to your place first, under cloud
of night; but we are bound to be seen even so, and on the whole it
would look far less suspicious in broad daylight. It will take
you some twelve or fifteen minutes to drive to your bank in a
growler, so if you are here with one at a quarter to ten to-morrow
morning, that will exactly meet the case. But you must have a
hansom this minute if you mean to prepare the way with those notes
this afternoon!"

It was only too like the Raffles of those days to dismiss a subject
and myself in the same breath, with a sudden nod, and a brief grasp
of the hand he was already holding out for mine. I had a great mind
to take another of his cigarettes instead, for there were one or
two points on which he had carefully omitted to enlighten me. Thus,
I had still to learn the bare direction of his journey; and it was
all that I could do to drag it from him as I stood buttoning my coat
and gloves.

"Scotland," he vouchsafed at last.

"At Easter," I remarked.

"To learn the language," he explained. "I have no tongue but my own,
you see, but I try to make up for it by cultivating every shade of
that. Some of them have come in useful even to your knowledge, Bunny:
what price my Cockney that night in St. John's Wood? I can keep up
my end in stage Irish, real Devonshire, very fair Norfolk, and three
distinct Yorkshire dialects. But my good Galloway Scots might be
better, and I mean to make it so."

"You still haven't told me where to write to you."

"I'll write to you first, Bunny."

"At least let me see you off," I urged at the door. "I promise not
to look at your ticket if you tell me the train!"

"The eleven-fifty from Euston."

"Then I'll be with you by quarter to ten."

And I left him without further parley, reading his impatience in his
face. Everything, to be sure, seemed clear enough without that
fuller discussion which I loved and Raffles hated. Yet I thought
we might at least have dined together, and in my heart I felt just
the least bit hurt, until it occurred to me as I drove to count the
notes in my cigarette case. Resentment was impossible after that.
The sum ran well into three figures, and it was plain that Raffles
meant me to have a good time in his absence. So I told his lie
with unction at my bank, and made due arrangements for the reception
of his chest next morning. Then I repaired to our club, hoping he
would drop in, and that we might dine together after all. In that
I was disappointed. It was nothing, however, to the disappointment
awaiting me at the Albany, when I arrived in my four-wheeler at the
appointed hour next morning.

"Mr. Raffles 'as gawn, sir," said the porter, with a note of reproach
in his confidential undertone. The man was a favorite with Raffles,
who used him and tipped him with consummate tact, and he knew me only
less well.

"Gone!" I echoed aghast. "Where on earth to?"

"Scotland, sir."

"Already?"

"By the eleven-fifty lawst night"

"Last night! I thought he meant eleven-fifty this morning!"

"He knew you did, sir, when you never came, and he told me to tell
you there was no such train."

I could have rent my garments in mortification and annoyance with
myself and Raffles. It was as much his fault as mine. But for his
indecent haste in getting rid of me, his characteristic abruptness
at the end, there would have been no misunderstanding or mistake.

"Any other message?" I inquired morosely.

"Only about the box, sir. Mr. Raffles said as you was goin' to take
chawge of it time he's away, and I've a friend ready to lend a 'and
in getting it on the cab. It's a rare 'eavy 'un, but Mr. Raffles an'
me could lift it all right between us, so I dessay me an' my friend
can."

For my own part, I must confess that its weight concerned me less
than the vast size of that infernal chest, as I drove with it past
club and park at ten o'clock in the morning. Sit as far back as I
might in the four-wheeler, I could conceal neither myself nor my
connection with the huge iron-clamped case upon the roof: in my
heated imagination its wood was glass through which all the world
could see the guilty contents. Once an officious constable held up
the traffic at our approach, and for a moment I put a blood-curdling
construction upon the simple ceremony. Low boys shouted after us
- or if it was not after us, I thought it was - and that their cry
was "Stop thief!" Enough said of one of the most unpleasant
cab-drives I ever had in my life. Horresco referens.

At the bank, however, thanks to the foresight and liberality of
Raffles, all was smooth water. I paid my cabman handsomely, gave
a florin to the stout fellow in livery whom he helped with the
chest, and could have pressed gold upon the genial clerk who laughed
like a gentleman at my jokes about the Liverpool winners and the
latest betting on the Family Plate. I was only disconcerted when
he informed me that the bank gave no receipts for deposits of this
nature. I am now aware that few London banks do. But it is
pleasing to believe that at the time I looked - what I felt - as
though all I valued upon earth were in jeopardy.

I should have got through the rest of that day happily enough, such
was the load off my mind and hands, but for an extraordinary and
most disconcerting note received late at night from Raffles himself.
He was a man who telegraphed freely, but seldom wrote a letter.
Sometimes, however, he sent a scribbled line by special messenger;
and overnight, evidently in the train, he had scribbled this one to
post in the small hours at Crewe:

"'Ware Prince of Professors! He was in the offing when I left.
If slightest cause for uneasiness about bank, withdraw at once
and keep in own rooms Like good chap,

"A. J. R.

"P. 8. - Other reasons, as you shall hear."

There was a nice nightcap for a puzzled head! I had made rather an
evening of it, what with increase of funds and decrease of anxiety,
but this cryptic admonition spoiled the remainder of my night. It
had arrived by a late post, and I only wished that I had left it all
night in my letter-box. What exactly did it mean? And what exactly
must I do? These were questions that confronted me with fresh force
in the morning.

The news of Crawshay did not surprise me. I was quite sure that
Raffles had been given good reason to bear him in mind before his
journey, even if he had not again beheld the ruffian in the flesh.
That ruffian and that journey might be more intimately connected
than I had yet supposed. Raffles never told me all. Yet the solid
fact held good - held better than ever - that I had seen his plunder
safely planted in my bank. Crawshay himself could not follow it
there. I was certain he had not followed my cab: in the acute
self-consciousness induced by that abominable drive, I should have
known it in my bones if he had. I thought of the porter's friend
who had helped me with the chest. No, I remember him as well as
I remembered Crawshay; they were quite different types.

To remove that vile box from the bank, on top of another cab, with
no stronger pretext and no further instructions, was not to be
thought of for a moment. Yet I did think of it, for hours. I was
always anxious to do my part by Raffles; he had done more than his
by me, not once or twice, to-day or yesterday, but again and again
from the very first. I need not state the obvious reasons I had
for fighting shy of the personal custody of his accursed chest.
Yet he had run worse risks for me, and I wanted him to learn that
he, too, could depend on a devotion not unworthy of his own.

In my dilemma I did what I have often done when at a loss for light
and leading. I took hardly any lunch, but went to Northumberland
Avenue and had a Turkish bath instead. I know nothing so cleansing
to mind as well as body, nothing better calculated to put the finest
possible edge on such judgment as one may happen to possess. Even
Raffles, without an ounce to lose or a nerve to soothe, used to own
a sensuous appreciation of the peace of mind and person to be gained
in this fashion when all others failed. For me, the fun began before
the boots were off one's feet; the muffled footfalls, the thin sound
of the fountain, even the spent swathed forms upon the couches, and
the whole clean, warm, idle atmosphere, were so much unction to my
simpler soul. The half-hour in the hot-rooms I used to count but a
strenuous step to a divine lassitude of limb and accompanying
exaltation of intellect. And yet - and yet - it was in the hottest
room of all, in a temperature of 270ø Fahrenheit, that the bolt fell
from the Pall Mall Gazette which I had bought outside the bath.

I was turning over the hot, crisp pages, and positively revelling in
my fiery furnace, when the following headlines and leaded paragraphs
leapt to my eye with the force of a veritable blow:

BANK ROBBERS IN THE WEST END -
DARING AND MYSTERIOUS CRIME

An audacious burglary and dastardly assault have been committed
on the premises of the City and Suburban Bank in Sloane Street, W.
From the details so far to hand, the robbery appears to have been
deliberately planned and adroitly executed in the early hours of
this morning.

A night watchman named Fawcett states that between one and two
o'clock he heard a slight noise in the neighborhood of the lower
strong-room, used as a repository for the plate and other
possessions of various customers of the bank. Going down to
investigate, he was instantly attacked by a powerful ruffian,
who succeeded in felling him to the ground before an alarm could
be raised.